


Secret Lives

by orphan_account



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Dialogue Heavy, Encouraging Bad Behavior, Gen, Immediately goes to confession, Major Character Injury, Murder Family, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 19:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The one where Brennan is secretly a killer, told in a handful of shorts focusing on how some of her major relationships change.





	1. Mentor and Apprentice

**Author's Note:**

> No, I don't love myself. Yes, I have a little more in mind to write. Absolutely, I'm here to write Bones AUs nobody asked for. :')

* * *

 

One night at Zack’s bedside, Brennan lays a hand on his shoulder and leans in close, so her mouth is hidden from view, and whispers in his ear, “I know it was you.”

He tenses, sucking in a quiet breath; she has to squeeze his shoulder to get him to exhale.

“It’s okay,” she tells him. “I understand, and I’m so, so proud of you.”

The team has pieced together Gormogon’s plan and purpose, and she has come to appreciate the goal he strives for, the things he is teaching his apprentice.

“A single life, in the grand scheme of human history, is meaningless,” she says, her voice still soft, her eyes shut. Like this, it might look like she’s praying, or reciting a poem or piece that holds significance for both of them. In fact, it’s a revelation that binds them together irrevocably, more so than anything has before now.

She can feel him try to control his breathing, try to keep it even when it seems emotion is winning out for once. Her hold on his shoulder loosens, a nonverbal signal that he should relax. It’s better for him, in his condition, if he’s calm.

“Don’t be afraid,” she tells him, and she pulls back, pausing to leave a kiss on his cheek. She hadn’t meant to, but she’s kissed tears off his skin. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“But if anyone else—”

“They won’t,” she assures him, sitting back in her chair, smiling at him like she’ll burst if she doesn’t. It feels like she might, like when she saw her father walk out of the courthouse a free man. Zack belongs with her, now more than ever, because he understands that one life is a small price to pay to save many. “Go make history, Zack, without anyone knowing you’re behind it.”


	2. Colleagues Twice Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a brief mention of offscreen physical abuse.
> 
> Squick warning for an entirely too casual conversation about murder.

* * *

 

“I suspected it was you.”

Brennan looks up from the skeleton they’re rearticulating on the table. She and Zack are alone in the bone room, the others gone off to a group lunch that Angela begged them both to join in on.

“We’re working on some rehabilitation exercises,” Brennan had told her. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

Angela had looked disappointed, but she hadn’t pressed the issue further.

Now, they have the freedom to talk about the things they only share with each other.

“At first, I thought it couldn’t be,” he continues, “but the more I looked at the evidence, the more I realized very few people could’ve accomplished such a precise murder.”

She smiles, aligning the C3 vertebra with the C2. “Do you see now how important it is not to let emotion and subjective perception cloud your judgment? Your first impression—what Booth calls your ‘gut’—was you recognizing the pattern in the evidence. As you said, very few people could’ve killed someone that way—and very few people could’ve found the killer.”

“You’re proud of me for knowing you’re the murderer.” He frowns, picking the victim’s right humerus up in his gloved hands. “Wouldn’t you want the case to remain unsolved?”

“It _is_ unsolved.”

“The remains are in Limbo.”

“Just like the ones you’re responsible for.”

She watches him, and he holds her gaze as the meaning beneath this exchange becomes clear in his mind. That’s when his forehead relaxes; that’s when her smile turns fond.

“One secret for another,” he says.

She nods. “Sometimes Justice needs a little help. No one will miss a man who beat his family.”

“No, I don’t think they will.”

They finish the rearticulation in silence. She steals glances at him when he pauses to scrutinize this or that bone. His eyes will tell him now what his fingers used to, and he’ll be as good a colleague in this as he is in matters the common person could never hope to understand.


	3. An Expendable Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This grew a plot. Why am I surprised? I shouldn't be. "What if" continues.
> 
> Very casual discussion of murder and human life in general.

* * *

 

“I’ve identified the next widow’s son,” Zack says to her one night as they put a set of remains away in a labeled drawer. It’s been months since the explosion that scarred his hands; he’s better now, despite some of the damage being permanent. “Dr. Sweets will easily be able to find where this victim fits in the tapestry.”

Brennan looks across the top of the drawer at him, her smile faint but no less sincere for that. “You are advancing quickly through the project despite the setbacks you’ve faced.” She spares a glance at his gloved hands. “I would expect no less from someone I trained.”

The praise gives him the briefest pause; she can’t help the satisfaction that small moment fills her with. The part of her that kills has no place here in the lab, where she and her team give dignity back to the deceased, and where their work has formed bonds of unbreakable trust among them. With Zack, the bond is stronger still, because he understands. He always has, better than anyone.

“This will be the first one I kill.”

Shutting the drawer, she frowns at him. “You—”

“I found the last one,” he explains, his tone unchanged, “but I didn’t kill him. I would have, if the Master had asked me to—”

“Has he taught you how to kill the victims?”

“I know the correct procedure, yes.”

“But has he _taught_ you? Has he— given you the opportunity to practice in a safe setting? Has he observed as you’ve made an attempt?”

“No. Why does that matter?”

Breathing deep, she straightens her posture and relaxes her face, falling into the role of teacher and mentor as easily as ever.

“Because practice minimizes the possibility that you will fail.” And, she thinks but does not say, she would never risk that with a student, intern, or assistant. Zack may be someone else’s student now, but to some degree, she will always see him as one of hers—especially now that he will share in one more thing with her. “Seeing human remains every day in the lab is not the same as _creating_  remains. I believe you are capable of it, but it is… a profound experience.”

In the mind of the average person, at the moment of killing and after, there would be panic and disbelief, perhaps horror, perhaps long-term trauma. In her mind—superior, talented in many ways but particularly, in regards to this, in compartmentalizing—there is a low, barely perceptible hum of fear, and the euphoria of aiding Justice, of doing what is right when codified law fails the weak the way it failed her.

“It changes part of you,” she says. “I expect you will not let it change _all_ of you. Dr. Addy belongs here with us; the Apprentice is the one who takes a small number of lives for the sake of the whole.”

“The Gormogon tradition is secret and separate,” he says, glancing at the drawer they’ve just filled, at the wall of bones in plastic containers. He stares at them, at their work, and she looks at them, too, recalling every case they’ve worked on together since the first day he set foot in the lab.

She could have lost him in the explosion that damaged his hands. They all could have. Human bonds are irrational, beautiful things, addictions all their own. If Zack had died that day, she would have hunted the Master with all her might, for the sake of soothing the gaping wound Zack’s absence would have left behind. If the Master hurts him now, or at any point, she may still. For now, she protects them both because of this connection she had never imagined would form, this—dare she say it, dare she use the same language Booth does, imprecise and subjective—love for a boy, a man who is like family.

“I’m the Apprentice when I stand before the Master,” Zack tells her, his voice softer but no less certain, “and when I’m doing what the Apprentice has to do. Otherwise, I’m Dr. Zachary Uriah Addy.”

She smiles, ready to voice her agreement, but he cuts her off without even knowing it.

“Although, no matter who I am at my time of death, both come to an end.”

“Yes.” She shuts her eyes for a moment, frowning. “I’m not certain why I am— surprised to hear you say that. It is a fact. How I feel about it does not change it. Each of us will die one day.” She pauses long enough to shake her head and give a rueful smile. “I suppose… I do not like the thought of you dying.”

Zack has always been possessed of distance from his emotions, and many people have found his steadiness of tone and expression unnerving. Brennan is not one of those people. The way he looks at her now, however, sends a shiver down her spine and makes the room feel colder than it is. Booth would claim her “gut” is warning her; right now, she is not inclined to disagree.

“I’m expendable,” he says, just as if it were a statement of fact. Objectively, and in the large scale, he is right.

But in the context of this conversation, he is wrong.

“No, you are not,” she tells him, in the same tone. “You are irreplaceable. We are, each of us, unique. Your perspective, your mind— _you_ , Zack, are not expendable.”

“But the Apprentice is,” he counters easily. “Therefore, I am expendable. There was one before me, but he failed the Master, so the Master killed him once he chose me for his new Apprentice. The Apprentice is expendable,” he repeats, like a teacher giving a lesson of the utmost importance, “and therefore, I’m expendable, by virtue of being the Apprentice.”

“Dr. Addy is not expendable.”

“But if the Apprentice fails—”

“He will not fail. _You_  will not fail. If you were able to meet and exceed my expectations, then you will far exceed the Master’s.” Her voice shakes on the last few words, and she sets her jaw and makes fists at her sides. There is no need to be emotional. It is time for a deep breath. It is time to refocus.

“I have no doubt the remains will arrive here,” she says, calmer, relaxing her muscles. “We will examine them as we have examined every set of remains. That is the best we can do for you.”

“Thank you, Dr. Brennan,” he tells her, nodding, as if nothing in this conversation has been out of the ordinary. “Is there anything else you need me for?”

“No,” she answers. “As agreed, I’ll take you to your home.”

Zack may be someone else’s student now, but he is still one of hers. She will be in his life long after the Master dies, and that is something that no person or great destiny can take from them.


	4. Failure and Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Apprentice fails, and his old mentor aids him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Squick warning for casual discussion of murder (the usual for this) and an allusion to cannibalism.
> 
> I can't promise I'm done with this mess, but I can't say if/when I'll write more, either, haha oops.

* * *

 

Evenings without cases make for hours of silence in the lab, the perfect time to sit and do paperwork. Documentation is vital, especially now that the team has a rotating group of interns. After years with only Zack for an assistant, Brennan has come to understand that she forms attachments to her charges too easily. Spending equal amounts of time with more people leaves less time to get to know them, to care for them the way any of her foster parents should have cared for her. It is a pain she should be over, she thinks, and mostly she is—except in the subtle ways it manifests: her concern for her interns, her affection towards Zack in particular, her reverent work on behalf of those too weak to fight for themselves.

She is completing her evaluation of this case’s intern’s performance, a positive if professional and restrained summary of their work, when the quiet in the office is shattered by sharp, hurried footsteps, rubber on linoleum, approaching her door. Its source is swift, coming into view through the panes of glass that make up some of her office walls mere seconds after she looks up, and shutting the door as soon as he’s through.

In the moment before he speaks, the barely controlled panic on his face makes her stomach churn and her hands perspire.

“I failed,” says Zack, voice flat, but higher than normal.

She stands, tense as she watches his breathing grow quick and shallow under the weight of all he is here to tell her.

“I couldn’t do it,” he says. “He was— It would’ve been easy. It _should’ve_  been, but I—”

“No, it shouldn’t have.” She walks over to him; up close, she sees tears in his eyes. Suddenly, he is not the Apprentice—he is, instead, Zack Addy, with bandaged hands and awful nightmares, a young man who in some ways is still a boy. “Even if you believe in what you’re doing, it is still difficult.” Because, when all is said and done, she does all she does to honor human life—even, paradoxically, when she takes it.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He sighs sharply, shaking his head. “I failed. The Master is going to kill me.”

“No, he won’t,” she says, and pulls him into a firm embrace. “He won’t, Zack. I won’t let him.”

It takes a few seconds for him to react, but then he hugs her back, shaky, tight—childlike. In one of her first cases with Booth, a boy she had shared the ugly truth of the whims of the foster system with had held her like this in the interview room. She had promised to keep him safe, and her promise had been honored by everyone who played a part in it.

If she could do that for a boy she has not seen since, she will do even more for someone who is family to her.

“He’ll kill you, too, if you get in the way.” Zack bows his head until his chin touches her shoulder. “I just— I wanted to tell you. I wanted to say good-bye.”

“I don’t believe you’re ready to die,” she tells him. “And I don’t believe that’s why you came here. You hope, beyond logic, that I can help you. I will.”

“How?”

Giving him a tight squeeze, she pulls away and stares straight into his eyes. After all they have been through, after all the death he has seen, after all he has learned as the Apprentice, Zack is not a killer. Could she have seen it before? Perhaps, but she misses signals that people like Angela identify so easily. Brennan was too busy feeling gladness over having someone in her life who understood her greatest secret to observe more carefully. Pride blinded her, pride in having played a part in the life of someone who would have a hand in steering history. She failed him before he failed his master.

Now it is time to make it right.

“Confess,” she says, and as his eyes fly wide open, she presses on. “ _Confess_. Tell them the facts: you were recruited, you found the last two victims, you didn’t take a life. Your sentence won’t be as severe, especially if you help them find the Master.”

“I don’t think being in prison will be safer for me. I don’t conform well to places that aren’t the Jeffersonian, and even if I did, the Master—”

“Is just another human being,” she says. “He… styles himself as someone greater than he is because of the tradition he follows, but he is no less vulnerable than you and I are. Just—”

In the pause, she thins her lips into a line, and he frowns down at her; she is his lifeline, she cannot break.

She doesn’t. Thoughts collected, she goes on.

“If you ate human flesh, I doubt the system will show you much mercy.”

“I didn’t,” he says, and relief washes over her. “He said I wasn’t ready for that yet.”

“Good.” She nods. “Now, go. Talk to Booth. Ask him to come here—I think that will be safest.”

She starts to move away, makes it a few steps before his voice stops her—steady like always, but higher with fear.

“Dr. Brennan?”

“Yes?”

He breathes deep, holding her gaze. “It was an honor to be your assistant, and your colleague.”

If hearts could break, hers would crack right then, armor failing under the soft weight of love.

“I expect you back when your sentence is over,” she says. She gives him a smile and heads to her desk to finish her reports.

He is gone by the time she is seated.


	5. The Past Reconsidered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for mentions of abuse in canon backstory. Squick warning for just... this entire AU.

* * *

 

Angela surprises her with lunch in her office one day, homemade vegetable barley soup. She’s been planning this, Brennan notes as she gets up from her desk to join Angela on the couch; Angela serves the cups with bread rolls from one of the artisan bakeries in the city.

“This is very thoughtful,” she says. “I’m not certain of the reason why, however.”

“Friendship doesn’t need a reason,” Angela says, handing her a cup of soup. “But I will say that— you’ve just been so down since what happened with Zack that I figured we should have some time together, just us.”

“You want me to feel like I can say whatever I want to you, discuss my feelings.”

“No, those are always part of our friendship. What I mean is, I want you not to think or worry about work during lunch.”

“Oh.” So she was wrong. She tends to be, in social situations. “Thank you.”

“If you do want to talk about anything, though?” Angela grins at her, relaxed and composed, graceful in a way Brennan thinks she will never be. “I’m all ears.”

That’s an idiom, one that Brennan finds amusing for being so descriptive. She snickers and stares at her cup of soup, stirring it idly. She had, of course, been immersed in her work before Angela arrived. Switching gears is not difficult for her, but the subjects they have just touched upon give her cause to breathe slow and deep through the dreamlike liminal space she finds herself in.

“I miss him,” she says, looking up through her lashes at her best friend. “I thought the feeling would’ve been gone by now, but… it isn’t.” Straightening, she gives a quiet sigh. “I find that disconcerting. It’s been six months.”

“Six months is barely any time at all, and you were pretty close with him.”

“Was I?” Brennan chuckles, a bitter, mirthless sound. “I never gave him anything. Just his internship.”

“‘Just’?” Angela shakes her head. “Sweetie, that was the best thing anyone could’ve given him.”

“A job?”

“A _chance_.”

“You all gave him things that meant something. The trophy. The artwork. The harmonica. The book. Things he could carry, things that were— pieces of his friendship with you. And all I gave him was—”

A secret, and advice that helped lead him to where he is now. She saved his life, but why does unease sit heavy and cold in the pit of her stomach?

“A letter?” Brennan finishes, and before she says anything more, she has a spoonful of soup, narrowing her focus to its savory flavor on her tongue.

“I know it seems like it was just a piece of paper,” Angela tells her, “but it was so much more than that. You gave him a home away from home. You gave him this—us. A family.”

“That’s what Booth said.” Another hollow laugh.

“Well, now it’s two of us, so you’d better listen.”

Yes, two people who are so gifted where she is lacking, agreeing upon this matter, are probably right; but there is also what they don’t know, what they can’t know, the truths that would change everything if they were known.

“I’ve read,” Brennan says after a few minutes of silence, “that the act of taking a life leaves a mark on the killer’s soul. I don’t believe that—in souls—but I would say that it leaves a scar on the _psyche_  instead. On the brain, perhaps.”

“So you’re saying Zack is always gonna remember what he did?”

“No. That’s certainly true—it’s… such a memorable act, I very much doubt he’ll forget it—and I don’t mean that it’s why he feels guilt, either. It’s more… his view of the world is different now. He has seen someone die. He has caused it. That _has_  to change a person somehow, doesn’t it?”

This is not conjecture, even though she presents it as such. She remembers the way she’d seen the world before, the frightened little girl she’d been when her foster father slammed the trunk door shut and plunged her into darkness and solitude, and she knows the way she sees it now. The fear remains, to some degree, and the helpless anger that coaxed hot tears out of her eyes and left crescent-shaped indents on her palms from where she balled her hands into fists, but the knowledge of the fact that she can take action, that she’s done it before, soothes those nerves.

She has power, has enough strength to do what needs to be done, and more than enough intelligence to remain free. What she does, she believes in, whether it’s in the lab, in the field, or in the shadows. What she’s done is what should have happened but didn’t; what Zack did, however, she doubts now. Gormogon’s logic was flawed, and she has told Zack as much, and held him as he wept. She’s sorry she let him go astray for the sake of what at the time seemed right. He had set out to steer history; all Brennan wants is to do what she wishes had been done for her.

Even though all she’d wanted was to be found and rescued.

“Right,” says Angela, dragging out the word, voice heavy with unease. “I think you’ve been spending too much time with Fisher.”

Brennan shrugs, forcing into the back of her mind the thought that she, too,may have gone astray. That isn’t for her to think about now. “I listen when he talks. His voice can be quite soothing and melodic.”

Angela laughs, glancing out the floor-to-ceiling window that looks out on the lab. “I don’t know if it’s better to tell him or not.”

“It may be better to tell him because it may help him combat his depression, but it may be worse because he may continue to discuss morbid topics, which may contribute to worsening his condition.”

“Yup.” Angela grins wide at her, nodding. “You’re better at this people thing than you think, y’know? Remember than whenever you start to feel sad about all that happened with Zack.”

Brennan smiles and looks down at her half-full, half-empty bowl. “I will,” she says, except it will not be to keep herself from feeling sad, but to guide her as she looks with new perspective at all that she’s done.


End file.
